Sunday, December 23, 2012

This morning, at
about 4:30, Ken and I said goodbye to our beloved 15 year old Blue British Shorthair,
Earendil Sky. August 5, 1997 - December 23,
2012. Long thought of as the healthiest
of our four kitties, Sky's decline was mercifully quick. For the previous day or so she had begun
telling me by degrees that she was ready to go, becoming progressively listless
with labored breathing, not eating and unable to sleep or even find a
comfortable position to rest. Her
extremities were cold. At 2:30 this
morning she woke us up, first trying to settle onto the covers between us, then
moving to various spots around the bedroom trying to find a place of
solace. I told Kenthat she seemed to
be trying to tell us to help her out of her misery and then, when she let out a
loud baleful cry, I was certain of it.
We took her to a 24 -hour emergency clinic near us and the Vet, after
examining her, confirmed what I knew intuitively. She was about half her healthy weight, her lungs were "wet" and she had a temperature of only 93 degrees. It was time to say goodbye. And we did.

We brought Sky's body home and laid her out on a towel in the den so
Nox (our 15 year old Black Earendil Brit who is a week younger than Sky) and Zak and Quin,
our 10 year old Maine Coons, could sniff her and come to some instinctive
understanding that she was no longer a part of their family. We've been told that this is a good thing to
do for them. We buried her in our backyard
this morning when the sun came up. We discovered that there is a healing
closure to this time-honored ritual that having the Vet deal with the remains
does not provide.

I say that Sky launched my (our) cat photography career for a few
reasons. I had always enjoyed taking
photos of our cats, trying, with more aspiration than technical skill in those
early days, to capture some of the beauty I saw in them. After losing Miss Kitty, Ken's mixed breed
cat when I came to live with him, to FIP, we chose to get a British Shorthair
kitten because we liked the way this breed looks. And we chose to get a Blue (gray) Brit
because we love the way that light can limn their gray fur in a fringe of
silver. In a cruel irony, this
beautiful kitten, who we named Smudge, was also doomed, along with all of his
littermates, to a very early death from the FIP virus he brought with him from
his cattery.

After once more thoroughly disinfecting our house and again waiting the
recommended 90 days to be certain we would not have to go through this again,
we got Sky and Nox from Thora Hart in Southern California. While Thora's Earendil Cattery was well known
for her many show-winning cats, we were only interested in getting a healthy
pet quality kitten. Thora did not have a
blue male but she made us an attractive offer on a blue female along with a
black male from a different litter that was only a week apart.

When we picked up these kittens from air cargo at the Dallas/Fort Worth
airport and I peeked into the front door of the carrier in which they were
shipped to us, I was instantly smitten.
I said, “Oh, Ken, you should see her face!” Now, all kittens are cute and cuddly, but
even with the perspective of over 12 years photographing and handling cats of
every breed, we remain convinced that no breed embodies more of these cherished
qualities of kitten-ness than young British Shorthairs do. And just looking at this heart-breakingly
precious example of the breed who was coming to live with us made me grin from
ear to ear.

From that first day and even after she began to lose her characteristic
roundness and the plushness of her coat over the past year or so, I could not
look at Sky, curled up asleep in a soft ball of gray fur, without smiling and
being flooded with a warm, comforting sensation of . . . what?
“Hearth and home”? A feeling that
“all's right with the world”? I realize
I am reduced to cliches here, but out of anything I could lay my eyes on in our
house, nothing made it look – and feel – like “home” and the right place for me
to be - than seeing this special cat of ours in repose.

Sky was good at looking good.
And Ken and I soon found out that we were not the only ones who thought
so when we decided to have the experience of showing her and Nox. While we quickly discovered that our lovable
Nox, decidedly the more affectionate pet of this pair, was indeed confirmed to
be the “pet quality” cat we were sold –
Ken used to say of Nox's brief show career that he couldn't get arrested in the
show ring – Sky's reception was quite the opposite. She quickly became an 8-ring Grand Champion
in CFA's Premier class for alters and then went on to achieve Supreme Grand
Alter status in TICA. Beyond burying us
in rosettes and spoiling us with “beginner's luck,” showing Sky gave us a
feeling for cat shows and the perspective of exhibitors – the people who would
soon become our primary customers. Back at home, it was Sky's immensely photogenic qualitiesmore than
anything that kept me trying to get better at capturing on film (remember
film?) what I saw in her. And it was the
advent of the digital camera – the freedom to experiment and learn from my
mistakes that its zero cost images and instant feedback provided – along with
the technical guidance and encouragement of Ken, who supported my passion with
ever more capable cameras, staging gear and studio lighting, that enabled me to
amass a sufficient portfolio of portraits of our cats and those of a few
friends that earned us an invitation to shoot our first show in May of 2000.

Beyond motivating my photography career, there are so many ways that we
cherished Sky and as many personal and private reasons why she will be
profoundly missed and long remembered.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

The Bengal Banner for The International Cat Association (TICA)

This image includes the call names of the cats used. We were commissioned by TICA to create two banners,
seven feet tall that retract into a case at the bottom to bring
attention to the TICA area in NYC at Meet The Breeds. What follows is
what we term "The Bengal Banner." The Maine Coon Banner is below this post.

Friday, October 12, 2012

This image includes the call names of the cats used. We were commissioned by TICA to create two banners, seven feet tall that retract into a case at the bottom to bring attention to the TICA area in NYC at Meet The Breeds. What follows is what we term "The Maine Coon Banner." Most all of the sixteen cat images at the bottom are repeated for the The Bengal Banner which I will post later.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cat Fancy magazine is profiling the Birman in its April 2012 issue. Below are my Birman images that I sent in for consideration. What they select from these images, is, of course, up to them. But if you see your cat amount the images I submitted, I just want you to know that I thought it was a fine candidate for publication.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

BACKSTORYWe first met Darrell Massengill and Diane Olson a few years ago when we were shooting at a cat show in Raleigh, North Carolina. They live in the area and had asked if they could sit in on a few photo sessions at the cat show and observe our techniques. They were also a cat photographer/cat wrangler team but, unlike Ken and I, who do this for a livelihood, their motivation is a far nobler calling: they do it to save lives. Diane and Darrell are part of a cat and kitten rescue group in Cary, North Carolina, called "Cat Angels." They photograph each rescue cat and kitten that comes in and post the images to the Cat Angels website to give each kitty a better chance for adoption.

Diane and Darrell understand that winsome portraits of their subjects are more likely to attract people to adopt them, so they were very interested in seeing our shooting, wrangling, and lighting methods as well as asking us questions about our equipment.

A year or two later, when they asked to sit in on some more shoots the next time we were in Raleigh, we were glad to see Darrell and Diane again. They are so friendly, gracious, and appreciative that we were happy to help. It was apparent that they were putting into practice what they were learning from us.

Diane Olson, Helmi and Darrell Massengill at Irregardless (Ken took the picture)

After the cat show, they took us to dinner at Irregardless, a great local restaurant, where we enjoyed spending time with them and swapping "war stories" about trying to coax decent portraits out of uncooperative kitties. Compared to their challenges, struggling to get appealing poses from freaked-out feral kittens/cats, we decided that we had it much easier with show cats who are generally easy to deal with.

Earlier this year, Diane sent us a calendar of her and Darrell's work, which Cat Angels published and sells to help subsidize the organizations operating expenses.

Accompanying each month's featured kitten is a little story about it.

This piece is quite obviously a labor of love -- as is everything that all those very special people in cat rescue do -- and we found it to be thoroughly charming.

Recently, Diane sent us the cover image for next year's calendar (below) that she and Darrell are currently working on.

Copyright Cat Angels Pet Adoptions

THE POINT OF THIS STORYMore recently, Diane wrote and asked if we could help her rescue group with a favor. That's what this story is all about. Their Cat Angels rescue group has lost the lease on their current facility, which the landlord now wants to occupy to expand his own business, so the rescue group has to move. And they want to double the size of their present space in order to double their adoption rate.

To help cover the additional expenses that this move will entail, Darrell and Diane have entered the Pepsi Refresh Grant Competition by producing this 59 second video:

To win this competition and get the grant, Cat Angels needs to get the most votes for their video, and Diane told me today that they are in 2nd place, but the competition is fierce with positions changing daily among the top contenders. So I'm posting this to my Blog to encourage all of you readers to vote for their video. Ken and I are voting every day, but we need your help, too!

You can vote every day in May by three different ways:

Through Facebook

By getting a free Pepsi Refresh Account

By texting 106148 to 73774 (PEPSI)

If you are reading this on Facebook or on my Blog, it's quite likely that, like me, you are a cat lover. And for one reason or another you may not be able to be directly involved in cat rescue like Diane and Darrell and so many other dedicated people who do this are. But you can make a difference by helping these big-hearted volunteers save the lives of more homeless cats and kittens. The $50,000 grant prize they can win -- with your help -- could save a lot of kitties!

Please take a moment to click on the above link to the Cat Angels video and vote for it, then vote again each day for the rest of this month. And share the link with your friends on Facebook! Thank you!

I will let you know how this turns out, but YOU can influence the outcome.